Chronology
by Daisukeismyboyfriend
Summary: Mello ruminates on his life from MU. Rated T because I rate things T... summary sucks.


Hello.

My life has been a very…

Oh, that. That sappy way of writing won't get me very far, and if I'm going to write this I'm going to need to get far.

First of all, I'll introduce myself.

My name is Mihael Keehl, better and more fondly known as Mello.

And this is my story.

--

I was born on the thirteenth of December, on some year I can't remember now, at some hospital somewhere that I don't know about.

All I can remember before I came to Wammy's is a lullaby that I guess my mother used to sing to me. And I forget the tune to it, too. My parents (I guess…) died in some sort of car accident, and after testing me, they brought me to Wammy's.

I was three at the time.

For the longest time, I was alone there, sunk deep into a world that only I could see, only I could touch and feel. I had nothing to do, no one to play with, and nothing to help my deep melancholy.

That all changed when L came to visit.

I'd never met him before, only heard rumors of the great detective we all aspired to emulate, but to see him in the flesh, in front of me, onyx eyes looking into my cerulean, was almost magical. Like seeing a unicorn.

I became amazed with him. I imitated his quirks, tried to act like him, but I could never pull it off quite as well.

And after he left to go back to Japan, Near came.

He was a short, white bundle of fluffy hair and black-brown eyes, always curled up in the corner of the playroom messing around with some toy. Someone gave him a blank puzzle to color, to paint and then put back together, but all he did was put an L in the corner.

He irked me from the beginning.

While I was fiery, hot-headed and liable to lose my temper at any moment, he was quiet, tranquil, without much emotion. I loathed that. He was my opposite.

Sometime after I'd gotten somewhat used to Near's presence, two things happened.

One: I discovered my chocoholicism.

Two: I met Matt.

I'll deal with the first one... first.

I was busy trying to keep my hopefully L-ish habits, and one of those habits was an overwhelming diet of sugar. I raided the kitchen for sweet snacks, and found a single bar of dark chocolate.

After that bar, I was hooked. I couldn't eat anything else for days. I found myself going into random moods if I didn't have a chocolate bar every couple of hours. And so I started buying them in huge quantities with my pocket money… and the rest is history.

Matt was a bigger thing to me than the chocolate.

He came into Wammy's House at the tender age of 7, when I had just turned 8. He was wearing some sort of huge parka, his ever-present goggles, and was desperately clutching a computer mouse.

"Hi." I'd said, trying to gauge just what kind of person would wear orange goggles and a parka everywhere.

He'd taken off his goggles, stared at me with brilliant green eyes, then widely grinned and announced, "I am the great Matt."

There had been a silence while we both processed this.

"I'm…Mello."

We became great friends, mostly because he was my roommate, and because he possessed a certain dislike for Near, which I enjoyed to the fullest.

We basically spent our days in bliss, mud wrestling, trying to beat each other at MarioKart, attacking smaller children who dared to poke their heads into our room, learning how to shoot guns by using cork pistols, stealing bits of food from the kitchen, playing music, dancing wildly when we beat a videogame boss, trying to dye our hair using food dye, and basically doing what normal, happy kids did.

Not that normal kids take Calculus in third grade.

"Hey, Near."

"…"

"What's that?"

"It's a bunny puppet."

"…Really?"

"Yes, really. Now, Mello, please go away, because you are invading my personal bubble."

"Riiiiiiiiight, Near."

"…"

By the time I was 13, Wammy's had sort of become a prison, like something was holding us in.

That something was L's influence. And when he died, my entire world blew up into tiny fragments, a drawing ripped up and thrown away.

I was shattered. I couldn't do anything, I thought, without getting the hell out of there, and without getting away from Near. So I gave him the L name without a second thought, grabbed my bag, said bye to Matt, and hightailed it out of there.

Leaving England was a bit of a problem, especially since I was a minor and owned several guns. Eventually I had to tell them that I was from Wammy's House, and after a few minutes of talking to Roger, they had me on the plane to San Francisco in a jiffy.

How easy life is when you're a genius.

That was sarcasm.

I landed, got myself a hotel room with some of L's money (which I pinched…), sat down on the bed, and thought for a solid three hours.

And it was that thought session that gave me the great idea (more sarcasm) to go and get myself mixed up with the Mafia.

In hindsight, it wasn't actually that bad of a wheeze.

Rod Ross welcomed me with open arms- after all, I dressed like a mobster, despite being regularly mistaken for a girl, and I knew how to use a gun- and let me stay in his safe house. It was one of the kindest things a mobster could do for someone, especially someone he'd just met.

I explained my brilliant plans to them, and they wholeheartedly agreed.

The kidnappings…well, you can look those up somewhere, can't you, since they're part of the Kira case and much more important than my life history.

The real important thing about that was Soichiro Yagami and those pesky Shinigami eyes.

He found out my real name. And since they all had wires on them, all of them heard it.

And so I had nothing else to do but pull the trigger, kill him, but Jose took that opportunity for me.

I don't know if I could have killed him. Probably not.

Well, I put on that mask, gathered up the courage/resolve to press that button…

The entire place caved inward on me. My face, my chest, my shoulder felt like they were burning, about to come off. I dragged myself out of there, the only thing intact on me my rosary.

I called Matt when I'd gotten outside the building, and he came to pick me up. "What did you do this time?" he'd said, and I'd just grimaced at him. I wanted chocolate and some good painkillers.

The next month passed in a blur. My wounds healed quickly, and I got used to the sight of myself in the mirror. I cut my hair. I got some new clothes, some more chocolate.

And, of course, I met Halle.

She didn't tell me that she worked for the SPK at first, but when she did, I was ecstatic. I could get to Near now…the only problem was that her entire house, except for the bathroom, was bugged.

Thus the bathroom talks.

I'd gotten very used to pointing a gun at people who bothered me by now, so when I'd finally gotten to Near, I was almost ready to kill him.

Almost. There's always an almost in these sort of things.

I couldn't do it. My finger tightened on the trigger, my aim was steady… I couldn't kill him. And he knew it.

But somehow, during that talk, it seemed like Near actually…respected me.

I got back to where Matt was staying, beat a bar of chocolate up with my teeth for not being able to help me kill Near, fiddled with one of my roommate's videogames that he'd left lying around, and thought hard.

I'd kidnapped someone before…why not that girl that was always going on about Kira? Hmm…

"WHAT? Mello, we could die!"

"That's a calculated risk, Matt."

"But it's so stupid! What are we going to get from Kira if we kidnap his girlfriend?!"

"More than we need."

But Matt eventually gave in, and so the plan was formulated.

The plan that would kill us both.

Matt would screech up to the convoy around her, shoot a smokescreen into their midst, and meanwhile I'd roar up on my motorbike, tell her to come with me, then veer off into an alleyway and bring her to our hideout for questioning, without ever showing our faces.

All this was calculated without even thinking much about the overwhelming chance that both of us could die.

I think that's the time when I finally admitted it, lost the last of my pride…

That I admitted that Near probably would beat me at this, and that he probably respected me at least three times more than I respected him.

Matt had sighed and nodded resignedly, then headed over to the kitchen to get out my last bar of dark chocolate.

The plan worked like clockwork in the beginning, Matt easily tearing up to their convoy, shooting something that looked like a missile but was actually a smoke grenade, then getting the hell out of there before they caught up to him. I pulled up beside Takada, and told her our fabricated story.

And that was when Halle recognized me. We made eye contact for a second, then the next thing I knew, a very scared Kira worshipper was clinging to my back as I speeded away.

I turned into the alley, just as planned, drove into the truck…

And right about then, Matt died. I didn't even know. I just kept munching my chocolate, eyes fixed on the road. And then the news came on, and a picture of him, blood all over his signature parka, his goggles broken by a bullet, his cigarette dangling limply from his lips.

I could have had a heart attack right there and then. Tears burned at the back of my eyes, threatening to leak out and ruin my "tough guy" image. I clutched at my rosary. "I'm…I'm sorry, Matt. I never meant for you to die…"

Those would be my last words.

I pulled up inside the church where we would've been meeting, turned around to talk to Takada, and suddenly I felt a pain.

In my heart.

I broke the glass of the window, trying to scream for help, but it was too late.

I was going to die.

Here. In this van. With a woman I didn't even know, didn't even really want to know.

Kira had won again. I'd lost. Again.

I gasped for air. No, I didn't want to die! I was perfectly healthy! This wasn't fair!

And I couldn't help it when my face fell onto the steering wheel, my rosary threaded through the spaces in it like a needle through cloth.

And I, the eternal number two, the not-quite-enemy of Near, the undisputed leader of so many organizations, succumbed to that which consumes all humans.

Death.

It doesn't hurt, not at first.

But then, after a couple years, months, hours-like I can tell the difference, there's no clocks- you start to ache. Not badly, just enough to keep you wincing.

But the worst part is meeting people there.

Matt was there, still with the bullet holes through him, still with the broken goggles hanging crookedly off of his face.

L was there too, looking just as he did in real life, along with Watari/Wammy.

Soon others joined us.

First Takada, still cold and shivering as she burned eternally, then Kira himself, Light Yagami, who stood with a dozen bullet wounds in his chest.

Near didn't come. And didn't come.

He still isn't here.

And I have to wonder if he's living an okay life. If he's really living up to the L name.

And I wish him good luck.

That's the end of my life's story, give or take a few experiences.

I guess I've got nothing more to do here than sit and wait for Near to come.

I beat him at something…

I died first.

--

…**トンズラこいて…****tonzura koite…and we get the hell out…**


End file.
